Reluctant Suspicion

by Finn, Scarlett

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Blake drummed his fingers on the table and glimpsed at his watch while listening to his phone ring in his ear, waiting for his partner to answer.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ he said, before Keane even had a chance to say hello.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not here,’ Blake said, leaving his seat to head for Cupid’s door. He’d been waiting here for too long, and nothing felt right. Something in the air made him edgy.

  ‘Who? Molly? Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blake said.

  ‘Could she have stood you up?’ Keane asked.

  ‘Not like this,’ he said. ‘Not today, she knew I was worried.’

  Blake pulled open the restaurant door, and the person who crossed his path was somehow familiar. The figure stopped and returned Blake’s stare, telling him that the feeling was mutual.

  The recognisable stranger came over to him. ‘Are you Blake Carson?’

  ‘Get her description and details out,’ Blake said to Keane, who was still on the phone. ‘Find her.’

  Disconnecting the line, all of his focus went to the man in front of him. ‘Harry King… We have to talk.’

  ‘I saw your picture on the internet… It took me a while to find you, but I had to know who I was dealing with before we met,’ Harry said.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Blake asked.

  They were back in Cupid’s. Harry was cradling a double measure of Scotch in his hands and staring into the liquid. Despite the early hour the man had claimed to need the stabiliser of alcohol. Blake knew something wasn’t right with the man the minute he clapped eyes on him. The shake in his hands and the twitch in his eye gave it away.

  ‘When I heard that your office had called mine, I knew immediately that Molly was in trouble. I knew that she’d get herself in trouble eventually. You can only keep a lid on the truth for so long.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come in?’ Blake asked.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do, and I had to get my head straight before I talked to anyone.’

  ‘Get your head straight about what?’ Blake knew how important it was to be patient and let people talk in their own time. But he was preoccupied with Molly and her safety. Until he knew where she was, she would be in the forefront of his mind.

  ‘Molly is a great woman. She’s tough, but she has a vulnerability. She still manages to be feminine, yet she has this quality that says she can deal with anything.’

  ‘I’ve met her,’ Blake said.

  ‘Molly and I have history, I mean we’ve known each other since we were kids. Cal and I were best friends, and she was just his kid sister, you know? Then… well… life happened,’ Harry said, swallowing down more alcohol. ‘After her dad’s funeral, we started… we got together.’

  ‘I know that,’ Blake said. ‘I know that you and Molly were together, and you slept with her best friend, Flora, who had worked in the bar for years. Molly hasn’t seen her since.’

  ‘Things didn’t work out between Flora and me either.’

  ‘That’s not much of a surprise, given how you started.’

  ‘Women are nuts, all of them. After that, I left town without ever intending to come back here. The rumour mill makes things impossible for a guy who… you know…’

  ‘Screwed around on a woman who loved him?’ Blake asked, without the same discretion Harry tried to use.

  ‘Molly isn’t as perfect as she makes out, and that’s why I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to you. I mean… I did hurt her, but… part of the reason I left… Molly’s not all there, if you get me.’

  ‘Not all there?’

  ‘She’s attractive and she keeps it together, except she’s not always so collected. She spaces out and… she can get violent.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, King?’ Blake asked, so far unimpressed, because it was obvious that Harry wanted to put at least some of the blame for the relationship demise onto Molly. From what he had heard, that was the furthest thing from the truth.

  ‘She hates the police, and I knew that, so… the times she got violent, when she got angry, I kept it between us. I wouldn’t call the cops in when I knew how that would upset her. You have to get to Molly,’ Harry said. ‘I tried to talk to her. I went to her place yesterday, and today… I saw what happened to the bar. Molly needs help, and I think if we go to her and make her see that, then she might… I don’t know. We have to try, though, right?’

  ‘Have you heard the rumours? About Molly’s parents?’

  Harry nodded. ‘About her father not being her father.’

  ‘What truth is there to it?’

  ‘Molly didn’t talk about it. But Cal brought it up once. He said that their mother got pregnant by the man she was having an affair with. They were going to leave their spouses to be together. But the lover’s wife, she couldn’t handle it and threatened to kill herself if he left her. So he packed up his wife and kids, then split. Molly’s mom was left here pregnant and alone, so she went back to Ashton’s and they worked things out.’

  ‘Cal said all of that? He knew about it?’

  ‘He knew that his mother had an affair, and he’d heard the rumours too. It doesn’t take much intelligence to put the rest together,’ Harry said.

  Blake had more pieces for the puzzles laid out for him. The child that her mother was pregnant with was Molly, and now they knew that someone did have it in for Molly, the wife of her mother’s lover – the scorned woman who had threatened to kill herself. All he needed now was a name, a description, an address, anything. He had to investigate and get deeper into this.

  ‘Do you know where Molly is? Do you guys have her under some kind of protection?’

  ‘We did,’ Blake muttered. ‘But she was left alone this morning. She was supposed to be here.’

  ‘When?’ Harry barked.

  ‘Now,’ Blake said.

  Harry scanned around the almost empty restaurant. ‘If she’s not here… she could be hurting someone.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Blake said, he didn’t believe that Molly was responsible, and he couldn’t tell yet if King really did think she could be, or if he was playing his own game. For now he’d let King believe that they were on the same side, because getting to Molly was the most important thing. If Choker had her, then she could already be dead.

  ‘Molly doesn’t go off the reservation without good reason. She would never disappear just for fun,’ Harry said.

  ‘Her phone is going straight to voicemail.’

  ‘Which means she is either out of range, or it is off.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Blake said.

  ‘Listen!’ Harry barked. ‘I am sorry if I am a little tense, ok? I was with this woman! She was a part of my life! I loved her! Do you have any idea what it is like to care so deeply for someone, and know that they could be a merciless killer?’

  Blake observed the man before him. Harry was shorter than him, but that wasn’t a stretch, Blake was six three. Harry’s sandy brown hair was short and his pale blue eyes were a little too shifty for Blake’s liking. It was difficult to see Molly going for a man so normal and reserved. He couldn’t see Harry appreciating her mischievous nature.

  ‘I have an idea, yes,’ Blake muttered.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Harry said, ‘for whatever you’ve been through in the past, but this is happening now. We are in the present and we have to find her. We have to find Molly before it is all too late.’

  ‘Strange that you should care so deeply for her now,’ Blake said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You didn’t seem to care for her so much when you were screwing Flora in Molly’s bed.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about that night,’ Harry snapped.

  ‘There is very little I don’t know about Miss Ashton,’ he said.

  ‘Read as many files and notes as you like,’ Harry said. ‘You can never know the real Molly until she chooses to let you in… It took me
years to earn her trust.’

  ‘What about Andrew? What caused the fight after Cal’s funeral?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Harry breathed. ‘What has any of this got to do with anything?’

  ‘What caused the fight?’ Blake asked again.

  Harry released a frustrated breath through gritted teeth. ‘Molly and I were… together… after the funeral. Mason found us together and told Andrew. They both went crazy and started ranting about respect, about Cal and how he would turn in his grave.’

  ‘But you did it anyway?’

  ‘I walked away, didn’t I?’ Harry said. ‘I respected the guys enough to leave my home and to leave Molly.’

  ‘You didn’t love Molly,’ Blake said. ‘If you loved her, you wouldn’t have cheated on her.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what it is like to love a woman like Molly? She’s so intense… all the time. She’s always teasing, playing games and demanding more and more in bed. She is so highly charged when she is turned on, it’s… difficult to keep up.’

  Blake knew exactly how charged she could get, but he hadn’t had any trouble keeping up. In fact, by the end of their session last night it was Molly who was begging for mercy. If that was how their sessions were after they had both been sleep deprived for two nights, he had to wonder what they would be like when they were both fully fuelled. He just prayed that he would have ample time to find out.

  ‘We need to get you to the station,’ Blake said. ‘You’ll have to give us a statement.’

  ‘We have to find Molly,’ Harry said.

  Blake stood up and gestured for Harry to follow. ‘We will, don’t doubt my resolve on that,’ Blake growled, and led Harry from the restaurant.

  Molly’s head lolled back and forth on the back of the seat in time with the bumping of the car along the road. The uneven surface betrayed that they were off the beaten track, but she didn’t know where they were. The car lurched to a halt with a loud screech, so she lifted her head to listen to what was around them. But the driver’s door opened and slammed, and there was a muffled squelch of mud before her side door opened.

  The rush of air that followed ruffled her hair, but all too quickly the door closed and her ears popped. Outside she heard the mud under their feet again and distorted voices drifted further from the car. They were out there talking, leaving her alone, and she had to work quickly.

  Stretching her hands against her restraints, she bent to grasp for her face. Her fingertips just touched the fabric of her blindfold, and she tried to shuffle it down. Frustratingly, it stayed just out of reach one too many times. With a last push, she scratched her temple in her effort to drag the fabric down. It went as far as the bridge of her nose, enough to allow her to twist her body and seek out her purse on the seat at her side.

  Popping the catch, she fumbled for anything useful, but without her phone or so much as a nail file, she found herself in dire straits. This was going to be the end for her if Blake didn’t figure this out, because she had no way to warn him or to tell him what had happened to bring her here. All around her were trees, and she couldn’t see anything past them but darkness. She had no idea where she was or what was planned for her.

  The squelch of mud returned in her direction and she shoved the purse aside, because it was useless to her. Pushing the blindfold back up didn’t put it back in place, but it covered more of her than it had when she pulled it down.

  The door flew open beside her. ‘We have to move now,’ Melissa said. ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘I think that question is a bit ridiculous,’ Molly said, trying to remind herself not to alienate the person who may be her only potential ally. ‘I’m still trying to figure out how all of this could have happened.’

  ‘I know,’ Melissa said. ‘I don’t understand it all myself.’

  Molly gasped as Melissa’s hand took her arm and pulled her forward. ‘What is taking so long?’ Choker shouted from somewhere in the distance.

  ‘We’re coming,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Molly shouted, trying to delay and raise her voice as she was yanked from the car.

  ‘We’re not that far from Weavers Cross… I think… I’ve never been here before.’

  Molly felt the solid, rough mud at her feet and her shoes were lost in almost an instant. Another hand grabbed her other arm, and she was dragged across grit and stone, which scratched at her and sent aching bolts through her. Managing to keep her mouth shut, she did her best to keep up, and a moment later she was thrown forward and landed hard against what felt like wooden stairs.

  ‘Welcome to your new home,’ Choker said. ‘Your last home.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ Molly spat. ‘They’ll find you out.’

  Choker grabbed her hair to pull her up the stairs, causing Molly to screech at the searing agony that shot into her skull. She tried to put her weight on her feet as she was dragged up stairs and onto a wooden landing.

  A door thudded open and again she was thrust ahead. The musty smell of damp dirt assaulted her. Her burning scalp and raw grazed legs fired heated adrenaline through her, but she didn’t have the chance to recover from the assault before she was kicked in the gut. The shock of the unexpected attack knocked the wind from her lungs. Spluttering for breath, she was suspended between pain and passing out. She coughed and tried to curl, then another kick was delivered and she tried to roll away from her assailant.

  ‘Don’t you pass out on me! Not yet! You do what I tell you now!’ Choker screamed.

  ‘Please!’ Molly said, writhing on the floor. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you! Dead!’

  Molly barely heard the words before the blackness fogging her mind consumed her.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘Oh, ho, you want to check this out!’ Jason said on entering.

  Blake lifted his head from his hand and looked at his partner careening through the incident room they had set up to trace Molly. So far they had hit a lot of dead ends in identifying Choker. But identifying her wasn’t paramount to finding out their present whereabouts, though the two were inextricably linked.

  Harry’s statement has proved useless, because he hadn’t been attacked by Choker, and his speculation about Molly’s sanity was just that – speculation. But he’d been briefed on the situation and offered protection, because it was likely that he was on Choker’s list of potential victims.

  Blake sat in the darkened room at the head of the collection of desks they had moved together to make one big desk. Everything they had on Choker was strewn across walls and across the table. They had motive, but no suspect and no location. Blake was ready to put his fist through the next person he saw, but Jason’s exuberance made him sit up and take notice, or rather stand.

  A group of officers came in behind Keane, carrying pizza boxes and bottles of Coke. Blake wondered how they could even think about eating or drinking at a time like this. ‘What’s going on?’ Blake asked, when Jason got to his position and dumped down a pile of handwritten notes, then went to seek something out. The small desk lamp in the corner was all that lit the room now. The blackness in the room mirrored that which was in his heart.

  ‘I found Mason’s mother,’ Jason said, running over to turn on the main light to give himself a better chance to find what he was looking for. ‘I got her, man, and get this. Molly’s mom never screwed around, it was this other guy who was obsessed with her. But that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘It does, but what you want is this,’ Jason said, stalking back to the desk to sweep evidence aside and find what he needed. When he did he whipped it up and documents fluttered to the floor, but he paid them no heed.

  ‘A map?’ Blake asked, and leapt from his seat to dart across the room to snatch it from Jason. ‘Give it to me.’ Together they shoved everything they didn’t need aside and flattened it out on the table.

  ‘The crazy guy, who kept trying to get into Molly’s mom’s underwear,
he had a wife who didn’t like the attention he paid to this other woman. Molly’s dad tried to get a protection order, it was insane. But they had kids… Mason’s mom said the kids were ages with Molly and Cal, and it’s possible they went to kindergarten together before the whole family left town without a word. No one knows what happened to them.’

  From the half smile on Jason’s face, that wasn’t all he had to say. ‘Tell me we know.’

  ‘After I got off the phone I checked it out,’ Jason said. ‘The brother, he was the one who hit Cal’s car. He caused the accident that killed Cal.’

  ‘God damnit!’ Blake said, slamming his hand on the desk. ‘That’s it then, he’s involved?’

  ‘No,’ Jason said, with a faltering smile. ‘He died a couple of years ago.’

  Blake frowned. ‘Then what—‘

  ‘He had a sister, who was also in the car, and… we can’t find her.’

  ‘That’s a good thing?’

  ‘She disappeared, literally vanished in a puff of smoke after her brother died.’

  ‘Did she now?’ Blake said. Few people just vanished, there would be a record of her leaving the country, or dying, but to just vanish meant she had something to hide. ‘And you’ve brought me this map, because…?’

  ‘Their father had a cabin when they lived in town, and there’s no record of him ever selling it. It’s not much to look at, but it could be something and we’ll be able to pinpoint it on the map.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Blake said, and began to examine the map.

  ‘You know there’s a chance that she’s already dead, that Choker—‘

  ‘I’m not going to take the chance that she is still out there with the killer. If we don’t get Choker now, she will remain on the loose. We know exactly what she is capable of.’ Blake laid a hand on the map. ‘You did good with Mason’s mom, and even if it’s nothing, I appreciate how seriously you’re taking this.’